fulllifeconsequences

[Why is Frisk even talking about when Chara gets hurt? Absolutely nothing happened to hurt Chara. This was supposed to be about Frisk. Now it's just... it keeps circling back to this. The victim trying to comfort the bully, like that makes any sense at all. And Frisk says they're not being forced into it, not being manipulated, but... trying to admit you're in any pain at all just shouts over the people who are really hurt, huh? Still looking for attention, Chara. You're the exact same creature you were on the surface.

They don't want Frisk to talk about this anymore. It's nauseating. Trying to soothe someone who's completely fine, who doesn't want an empty roll of it's-okays and pitying pats on the head so they don't have to think about one more person they trust harming them.

So they ERASE it. Shove it away. Pull out some snail facts. Something close enough to seem relevant, but not actually talking about them at all.]

Back in the middle ages, I heard people believed in mortification of the flesh in a very literal sense. Flagellants, they called themselves.

[A fact from a dusty old book, too advanced for a kid their age - but they always were so grown up, and age is just a number, isn't it?]

God will forgive you for your sins, but you must suffer to reduce the punishment that sin carries with it. So they'd journey around from town to town, reciting psalms and whipping themselves until they bled. They touted suffering as a pious act. Something that made them closer to Christ, I guess. Like the way he suffered was an example he set for everyone.

[A recitation that feels like standing in a golden hallway, listening to distant bells and staring up at stained glass.]

[It's an abrupt shift of subject matter, and one that leaves Frisk feeling...disquieted, they suppose is the term. They shift there on the spot, weight moving from foot to foot as a multitude of emotions shutters across their ordinarily blank features.

It's a strange and discomfiting sensation. They'd been brought to services like that, a few times. Not like anyone they knew on the surface was especially religious, but they got the feeling that it was something that was done because it was simply what people did on big holidays, like Christmas or Easter. There was stained glass, and there were the colored shapes cast against the floors and walls that Frisk liked to watch, letting their eyes glaze over as they stopped listening to the Important Man at the front orate at length about the importance of suffering and martyrdom and dying for people's sins. It always seemed to be the same speech every time they heard it. Maybe it was. Maybe it was written on the inside of his hand - only it had to be too long for that to be the case. They'd been too young to receive the communion of flesh and blood - bread and wine, they knew it was meant to be, really, but all the adults seemed so bent on pretending otherwise that it just felt rude not to play along too.

Too young, the priest had said, smiling at the small, squat child with their arms crossed obediently over their chest as the adults instructed. Too young to receive these holy gifts of flesh and blood that would help cleanse you of your natural sin.

Too young, they all said, as if Frisk didn't know the real reason, that they were simply too impure for something as sacred as that to touch their corrupted flesh. Where does a thing like you get off, pretending that you deserve salvation? You haven't even really suffered. You are a mistake and you were born of a mistake, and something born of sin can only yield more sin.

Remember that, unclean thing.]

I think it's stupid, [Frisk announces flatly, after a moment. And then they pause, almost imperceptibly, practically ritual at this point, awaiting the inevitable bolt of righteous anger to strike down their blasphemous words.

It doesn't come. But it never came before, so they hadn't really expected it to.]

I mean...we suffered, didn't we? We kept getting hurt. By monsters, by humans, by each other, by - by ourselves. I don't feel any...any better for it. Any purer.

[The last word they almost spit out like a curse. Pure. As if a thing like them -

Well.

They've never been able to scrub themselves clean, have they?]

Then how come... good things only happened when you suffered for other people?

[The barrier only came down when Frisk refused to fight back, didn't allow themselves to be afraid of or unhappy with the people who had harmed them. Became their best friends, solved their problems.

The barrier only came down because Asriel suffered for humanity's sins. Smiled and did nothing as he was beat to death by strangers. Endured countless loops of numbness, isolation, ennui. Sacrificed the ability to feel, to love, the right to be loved, all to undo the punishment humanity inflicted onto them all. Had nothing left, in the end, but an endless future of emptiness, all alone in a hollow mountain.]

Asriel suffered, and he's an angel.

[Chara suffered, and they're a demon, because there came a point where they decided they didn't want to suffer in silence anymore.

Why did the world teach them this, if it's not... how it's supposed to be?

Why did the body laid on a halo of golden flowers just look filthy and blistered and awful, not radiant or holy? Isn't that how saints are made? By sacrificing themselves for the greater good? Wasn't all that agony the least bit redemptive?

...If you kill yourself, you don't go to heaven, do you?]

Hell isn't supposed to be pleasant. Purgatory isn't supposed to be restful. You're not really repenting unless it's hard and painful, right?

Is that where we are? Hell, or limbo, or whatever in between?

[Maybe it was a certain kind of death, their electing to remain here, in Wonderland, to never return to the Underground. They cannot simply slide their smiling face into a photograph and accept it as truth, accept themselves as belonging to a family that would be safer without their presence staining the glass.

What constitutes good suffering and bad? Why does Asriel suffer beautifully, and why is that okay? He's - it's not, though, is it? It can't be.

Kill or be killed.

Don't kill, and don't be killed.

Is that really all there is? If you kill you're bad, and if you don't kill, you're good. If you suffer for everyone else's problems, this is acceptable. This is allowed. If you lash out, strike back, even by accident, you should be smited down like the evil and dirty and wrong thing that you are.]

We're not going back there. We already said we weren't.

[The words are even and simple, a statement of fact, a fundamental aspect of their world and their universe.]

So it doesn't have to be like that anymore. Maybe we're still learning, but...but I don't want it. I don't want you to feel like you have to suffer to be okay.

This was never even about me suffering, Frisk. It was about you suffering.

[Does it even make any sense at all to be getting annoyed with being comforted? Is annoyance what they even feel? It's something frustrated and unsettled, they think. They don't want to talk about themself. It's not about poor Chara and their precious little problems. Nothing that happened here tonight involved Chara getting hurt.]

I just... Frisk, are we really sure that it's not like that here, too? Even if it's a different world, I've still got LOVE. Even if it's Wonderland, I still... I make things go wrong.

[Buttercups instead of cups of butter. A plan Asriel tried to stop far too late. A stream of raw brokenness pouring from their outstretched hand. Not small mistakes, not inconsequential. Things that feel calamitous, ruinous, unnatural and awful and demonic.]

I mean, science tells us that if repeated experiments yield the same conclusion, that's sufficient evidence that a theory is valid. How am I supposed to believe something when the facts certainly seem to suggest that I just contaminate whatever I get my hands on, right?

Chara, I don't...care about that. I don't care if you think you're not worth SAVING, that you're not worth loving. You know I'm not going to change my mind.

[Determination vs. Determination. And we all know how this game ends, don't we?

It's useless, Chara. You're never getting rid of them. Even with all the LOVE in the world, you will always be their partner, their SOULmate, the one person they will always value above all others.]

It's...easier to blame yourself. I know it is. It's easier, because you get to have control over it.

[And you can tell yourself that you're the one who can control the change that happens. You're the one with the special power, so it's your responsibility to do the right thing. To fix everything. To change things. To change fate.]

You get to make it all your fault, and then you know who to hurt.

Someone's got to take responsibility, haven't they?

[Isn't that the grown-up thing to do? To own your wretched decisions, instead of trying to push the blame onto someone else? You get told again and again that what happens is your fault, your fault, why are you like this, you horrible brat? You're not worthy of being included with the wife and child someone wants to see again. You're not exactly the greatest person. You're not even human, you're just pretending to be one. You're not welcome, kids like you should be burning in hell, you're the one standing in the way of everyone's hopes and dreams.

How long is it going to take, they wonder, until they think the way Frisk wants them to think? Until they can tune all of that out.

How long until they even progress to the "you sort of know it's not your fault but tell yourself it is" stage that Frisk seems to be suggesting now? It does feel like their fault. Of course it does. Nobody made them accept something that could be as dangerous as magic. Nobody forced them to coerce Frisk into starting an encounter. They could have waited. Could have considered the potential to do magic satisfactory enough and never try to experiment. Could have answered in a way that would make Frisk feel better, instead of twisting this into a drawn-out, frustrating exercise in trying to fix someone who doesn't even want to be comforted right now. Nobody's going to come out of this feeling accomplished.

They try to think of more snail facts, more diversions. Nothing comes to mind.

So they just... sigh. Hollowed out, defeated, devoid.]

I just wanted fire magic. Not... not this. I thought maybe if other Charas had earned it somehow, maybe I could earn it too. What are the other Charas doing that I'm not? Why am I the only one who messed it up?

[Frisk opens their hands, palms up and facing the ceiling. Hold them out limply, gently, in front of them. It is the same kind of simple offering Chara makes. Sitting beside them on a bed. Extending a hand but not moving in to grasp another without the explicit or implicit permission, the nod of a head or an intake of break or a meeting of eyes.

But their hands are open and waiting for theirs, should they require them. They're bandaged a little, and broken. But they still work.]

Why's "someone" gotta be you?

[Logically, they know why. Consequences, and so on and so forth. They're meant to hold people accountable. They remind people of their promises, tell people when they've gone astray. So why should they skirt their responsibilities? Avoid ascribing the same consequences to themself?]

You didn't mess it up, Chara. And it doesn't matter if they did something differently. They're not you.

[Frisk's SOULmate. Frisk's partner.

Frisk's Chara.]

Why does one Frisk get to be a Boss Monster and I don't? Why does one Frisk fall first and I don't? I don't know if that's...our fault. If we can really be to blame for that.

[Why's "someone" gotta be them? They don't even bother to answer a question as pointless as that.

What did they hate most about humanity? "Not my problem." Crying out for help, and nobody comes. "Are you sure you weren't leading them on?" Like they must have been asking for it. Imposing a barrier on a people who did nothing wrong, purely out of fear for what they might, hypothetically, do. Expecting them to be the ones to take up the task of fixing that barrier, instead of surrendering SOULs in willing repentance. Shifting blame to whomever happened to be powerless enough that they couldn't protest it. If it's not them, it won't be anyone.

Besides, Frisk knows what they've both been taught. If you've got some kind of special power... well, they get it, right? If they've got the gall to not even be human, to just walk around masquerading as something that's supposed to be here... there must have been a reason for it. There must be some role they were meant to fulfill. Otherwise... why are you even alive? They shouldn't exist. They're supposed to be dead. They should be burning in hell.]

Falling first isn't the luxury you might expect it to be.

[Being a boss monster, though... they can't argue that. Ha ha.

They tell themselves to stay still, to bunch their hands up into tight fists and use every second of ache as their nails dig into the meat of their palms as a chain-link fence. Don't touch. Don't touch. They don't want comfort, they don't need it, they hate touch, they think this is stupid.

But they reach out and seize Frisk's hands with a desperation they don't understand.

They regret it almost immediately. Hate that they could clamp onto bandaged, fragile fingers with all the abhorrent, vicious strength their fists are so full of. Hate that they're so clingy, so attention-starved, so dramatic, so manipulative. Have some self-control, Chara. You're supposed to be in control, are you not?]

I'm just - I'm sick of it being like this.

[The worst human who fell, the worst Chara, the worst sibling. The worst.]

How else do we make it any better?

[It has to be them that can make it better, right?

Otherwise... otherwise the answer is that nobody will make it better. That it's always going to be this, and that's inescapable.]

[Their hands close over Chara's, tightly, a fierce jerk of motion that they think might hurt, must hurt. They don't want to let go, though. They don't want to let go.

Falling first doesn't seem to end well for anyone, much less that other Frisk. It all still ended in blood and dust and pain, didn't it? Asriel still died. The first human was still chained to the eighth's SOUL. There was no escaping it. No escaping fate.

Anyone who would claim that Frisk would not have made Chara's mistakes, that they wouldn't have fallen just as hard and hurt just as much. Shattered the Dreemurrs apart, the spear that drove them all apart, that tore away monsters' hopes and dreams. The future that darkened everything.

* Still just you, Frisk.

They work their fingers between Chara's, folding them over their knuckles, holding them tightly, palm to palm.]

I know. I know.

But it's not...all bad, is it? Sometimes it hurts. But sometimes it - it doesn't.

[And it doesn't hurt as much, when they know someone else is here with them. Someone who understands.]

You're it, Chara. You're the Chara that's always been here, with me. We're partners, right? SOULmates.

That's the best thing I could ask for.

[They stare down at the hands locked around theirs. Still a perfect fit. Like mirror images. Like they were made to hold onto each other. Like a lock that only yields to the one key it was made for, and nothing else.

They focus on the bridge of their conjoined hands. They breathe. They try to let go of whatever has clenched itself around their hollow chest.

Sometimes it doesn't hurt.]

I am happy that you tried to give me this.

[It didn't... work out as planned, ha ha. This pie didn't have butter in it. They wish it could have been more satisfying for Frisk, more fulfilling, a better payoff than a lot of pain. But...]

I'm happy you thought of me.

[They aren't even supposed to be feeling at all, but Frisk still thought of how Chara might have been feeling, didn't they?]

[Maybe it didn't work this time. But they don't think it doesn't ever have to work, right? Toriel would be happy to teach them, wouldn't she?]

We can try again later.

[They're not giving up on this, and they're not giving up on Chara. It can work, they know it can. With enough determination, you can do just about anything, can't you? And they're not just like any other human. They're Chara. They're special beyond measure.]

Ask Toriel about it, maybe. I think maybe she could...teach you for real.

[You didn't get this far by giving up, did you?]

* IC Inbox

cw self-harm in a religious context?? how do i tag this

cw more self-harm references

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject